I was going to comment along the lines of "Shouldn't they try correctly predicting the weather in London right now first?" but the best rated comments say it all.

I wouldn't be so quick to decry the Met's ability to get the weather right mostly. We all recall the big failures but that's likely just confirmation bias in action. Judith Curry wrote an interesting piece lamenting the poor state of US forecasting and the Met is held up in high regard according to accuracy...

I'm all for tarring and feathering them on their climate models though!

It was the high profile BBQ summers that never happened which did it for Mystic Met. Also wasn't one of the recent freezing winters supposed to be warm and wet? Ooer missus.

Not to mention trying to fudge what they had said - which was different to two different audiences at different times on the same forecast iirc.

Weather Action allegedly has a far better approach to long-range forecasting, using a solar-based technique.

I totally agree regarding he BBQ summer failure and failure to predict a long hard winter. Twice. In a row. However, on a short-range basis they generally do get the weather right. It's just when they try to go beyond the next week or two that the complexity of weather/climate are beyond them.

Quite. I'm sure I read a reasonably authoritative source that cited a stat on short-range UK weather forecasting - if you say tomorrow's weather will be the same as today's there is a slightly better than 50:50 chance of being correct. I'll take a look for the source.

Unfortunately the Mystic Met are worse than a tossed coin far too often even if they get it right more often than their fellows stateside can manage.

Just had a response on twitter about the MWP global paper, and apparently it's "not significant". Apparently the IPCC being wrong about such things, as well as facets of the scientific community, is not significant. The mind boggles.

Quite. I'm sure I read a reasonably authoritative source that cited a stat on short-range UK weather forecasting - if you say tomorrow's weather will be the same as today's there is a slightly better than 50:50 chance of being correct. I'll take a look for the source.

Unfortunately the Mystic Met are worse than a tossed coin far too often even if they get it right more often than their fellows stateside can manage.

Ok, I've gone back to the source article that Curry made her claims from (http://www.wjla.com/blogs/weather/2012/03/the-u-s-has-fallen-behind-in-numerical-weather-prediction-part-i--14897.html) and it's making claims from a number of papers but is specifically about Medium Range Weather Forecasts (MWP) using Numerical Weather Prediction (i.e. super computers + models(!!!)).

The statistical analysis of predictions vs reality is the judge of these and all it discerns is that the Met is 2nd most accurate and that all predictions are gradually improving. Of course, saying something is 2nd best could be accurate while it's actually next-to-useless.

While I think we should hold the Met's ideological position in absolute contempt they're clearly not the worst at actually doing their real job. Well, by real, I mean the job we expect them to do...

Agreed they're not all bad in all ways but they've had too many public humiliations to retain overall high levels of credibility - though as you say, the highest levels of contempt must be reserved for their climate change antics.

So we have this forecast fiasco:

"Bishop Hill has located the 'supposedly secret' winter forecast sent to the British government. The details of the forecast produced are nothing short of astounding." not least as it was different to the other version

"It’s now time for those who are funded by taxpayers’ money and who engineered the deception, and those who allowed it to happen, to pay the price for their actions. Over to the executive board of the Met Office and the trustees of the BBC…"

Same winter, same month of issue, different forecast - can we trust people who do this? It's not climate change it's forecasting.

One's a forecast of temperature and the other a forecast of 'probability of warmer than average' temps. Both with different scales (one degrees C, the other %) different granularities and different spatial resolutions. Why on earth would/should they look the same?

The different scales and colour codes are hardly an explanation of two different forecasts, in that they are seemingly claimed by the BBC and Mystic Met, not just me, to refer to two different forecasts of the same winter - even within the implications of different representations. One went to the government and was allegedly 'secret' while the other was public.

The charts posted were a follow-on from the articles linked to earlier.

The Beeb's and Mystic Met's explanation for this fiasco beggars belief. Have another read of the linked articles and others on this theme, in paricular this extract from a Mystic Met-Government e-mail eschange.

The Met Office seasonal outlook for the period November to January is showing no clear signals for the winter.

So, what did Mystic Met actually forecast for the 2010/11 winter...'no clear signals'.

We need to remember that the whole fiasco played out because the public forecast of a mild winter was wrong, at which point the Met Office and the Beeb apparently said 'not so' and that there was in fact a secret cold winter forecast that was accurate. The nature of the forecasts shown as being different in their nature as well as differente in their represenetation is a claim by the Met Office and the Beeb, not (just) me. It was apparently an attempt to rescue the Met Office's reputation. Did it work for anyone?

He's probably right actually as trends can be made to suit depending upon where they begin and start. They are also hugely suspect due to the widely varying methods of measurement and interpretation.

No... he is not. The issue isn't cherry picking. The issue is that it doesn't matter if the MWP period was global or not. It makes no odds otherwise. To use his phrase "Logic error: An earthquake causes a landslide in 1800. A TNT blast causes a landslide in 2000. 1800 event tells us NOTHING.". It seems to him that it doesn't matter what happened in the past, temperature wise, as the current one is man made.. regardless, it has a huge effect on what the 'norm' is in recent historical past. "Unprecedented" is a word often used.

He's probably right actually as trends can be made to suit depending upon where they begin and start. They are also hugely suspect due to the widely varying methods of measurement and interpretation.

No... he is not. The issue isn't cherry picking. The issue is that it doesn't matter if the MWP period was global or not. It makes no odds otherwise. To use his phrase "Logic error: An earthquake causes a landslide in 1800. A TNT blast causes a landslide in 2000. 1800 event tells us NOTHING.". It seems to him that it doesn't matter what happened in the past, temperature wise, as the current one is man made.. regardless, it has a huge effect on what the 'norm' is in recent historical past. "Unprecedented" is a word often used.

I'm only responding with the information available, ie you didn't state in what context he made that remark. To say that the 'current one is man made' is absurd and meaningless because there is nothing untoward about it in the first place and if there was there is no correlation with man in any measurement currently (and historically) available anyway

Their timeline is the most interesting part. Milanovich cycles increase energy reaching the northern hemisphere, which melts a whole bunch of ice, which releases loads of freshwater, which is heated at the equator, which then releases a whole pile of CO2...

And co2 is the cause? Are they serious? Sounds to me like it is a result of temp change, rather than the other way round, but what do I know. It also suggests that anywhere near to 260ppm and we will all die an icy death, so best keep those emissions up in the 350+ range, for the sake of the children.

The (time) resolution available isn't conclusive. The cause and effect aspect is faith. Given that carbon dioxide changes always follow temperature changes where high levels of (time) resolution are available in the data, meaning that carbon dioxide levels are an effect of climate change not a cause, this is YMCA - yesterdays myths cooked again. Not to mention the lack of opposable thumbs in mammoths

Where the article from the ever faithful Black has a chart complete with highlight circle claiming to show causality via a claimed lag of temperature to tax gas, it cherry picks a change in trend in one dataset that has no corresponding change in trend in the other, amidst a variety of trend changes over various timescales where you could pick your start and end times to get the result you want.

Immediately prior to the claimed causal event, carbon dioxide levels fell for about a thousand years while the global temperature trend remained unchanged and was rising in spite of falling levels of the evil gas.

Same old hand waving. Black et al should consult TheHeretic for a better understanding of what's going on

Latest NOAA ENSO Advisory just in for the La Nina and El Nino enthusiasts

ENSO Advisory said:

La Niña continued to weaken during March 2012, as below-average SSTs persisted primarily in the central Pacific. All of the Niño indices have warmed considerably during the last two months, and the Niño 4 and Niño 3.4 indices averaged only near -0.5 in March. The oceanic heat content (average temperature in the upper 300m of ocean) anomalies also continued to warm, with alternating pockets of negative and positive temperature anomalies observed within the upper 100 m in the central and eastern Pacific. Significant anomalous low-level westerly winds developed in the western tropical Pacific in late March, associated with the MJO. This wind event could further warm the central and eastern Pacific within the coming few months. Presently, however, the larger scale atmospheric circulation anomalies and the Southern Oscillation Index retain their La Niña characteristics. Accordingly, convection remains suppressed in the western and central Pacific, and enhanced over Indonisia, Malaysia and the Philippines. Collectively, these oceanic and atmospheric patterns indicate that a transition from La Niña to ENSO-neutral conditions is underway. A majority of models predict ENSO-neutral conditions for March-May 2012, continuing through the Northern Hemisphere summer 2012. Based on the continued weakening of the negative SST anomalies during March 2012, and on the historical tendency for La Niña to dissipate during the Northern Hemisphere spring, we continue to expect La Niña to dissipate during April 2012. ENSO-neutral conditions are then expected to persist through the summer. Thereafter, there is considerable uncertainty in the forecast, which slightly favors ENSO-neutral or developing El Niño conditions over a return to La Niña conditions during the remainder of 2012.